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by Bob the Octopus on 03-23-2008 (0 comments)
A quick note: I expect this entry to morph over the next few months, as it is really a part of my thought process and just a developed working outline. I am going to turn it into a full article about creating a t-shirt line, with links to other articles that cover topics more in depth. I may even pull it completely out of the development blog and make a series of it in a new section called Resource Center. I will ask other writers to contribute to sections of it as well.
Many T-shirt artists who come over to Ziraxia are here because they want to create a T-shirt line, but don’t want to face a barrage of hassles associated. To start, creating a T-shirt line most likely involves the following if you really are hands on about it:
- Starting a T-shirt Company and all of the related characteristics of starting any company, including but not limited to licenses, location, a plan, the time to do it, and start-up costs for a few.
- Samples
- Market Research
- Inventory
- e-commerce
- Sales & Marketing
- order fulfillment
- Money, money, money
Other companies are poised to help.
There are plenty of companies who can be a tremendous help with one or a few of the above, but often they fall short in the other areas. For example, there are plenty of screen print companies that will create a batch of inventory for you, but will charge you through the nose for samples. Ziraxia doesn’t criticize them for that, as making samples is very time consuming, and someone has to pay for tying up valuable shop time. There are other companies that will make you samples comparatively cheaply, but they won’t use screen printing to do it. Instead they digitally print them. In many cases (not all) that leaves dark garments out, and fine detail with current technology is very tough to pull off. There are companies who will loan you money, but you’ll have to pay them back; companies that start your company for you; and companies that do market research.
But what if you don’t want to do all that?
When you want to take a simpler, less immersive approach to trying your hand at designing T-shirts, Ziraxia is a great option. We make it pretty easy for you. Here’s our process:
1) You create the design and upload it to us.
2) We put it up for voting in the Designs Waiting for Liftoff Section (see tou and policies) and see if others think it is good as well.
3) When your design gets a high enough rating and has enough votes, we put it up for sale. (Market Research)
4) We and you promote your T-shirt in order to sell it. Hopefully your efforts at promotion are intense, as you will most likely know the kinds of people likely to buy your designs.
5) We display it, print it, sell it, fulfill it, and record it.
6) We pay you royalties on the sale.
You Pay Nothing.
Notice how in the above process, there was no mention of startup costs. That’s because there are none. Ziraxia does not charge you, but, instead we pay you. The only way you pay for start up costs is if you want us to send you a bunch of your T-shirts to promote your line, sell for yourself, and give away to your friends. In that case, we sell you your T-shirts at a discount (provided we are selling your design on Ziraxia). We actually charge you less than a traditional screen printing shop charges for T-shirts because we have your design up for sale here.
Get Started on Ziraxia
Creating an account is FREE and easy, so go ahead and do it today. Before you know it, you’ll be selling your designs!
Further notes:
This article should act as an outline for a number of other articles for our Resource Center. The following are titles of articles I would like to include. If you are reading this and believe you can contribute, there are many people who would appreciate your efforts. We’ll even send you a FREE T-shirt if we use the article. Also, if you have any ideas, we’d love to hear them.
Making Samples (What, When, Why, How)
Marketing:
-How to submit your designs to T-shirt Blogs,
-How to create and promote YouTube videos,
-How to sell your T-shirts in Stores
-How to sell your T-shirts at Conventions
The ins and outs of order fulfillment,
Making T-shirt Art
-General how to create the artwork for your T-shirts,
-Art for screen printing specific
-The raw basics of vector art
How to go broke really fast starting an internet T-shirt Company
